Poets
NaPoWriMo April 30 : Full prompt in link. You could say that I’m “on prompt,” in the sense that I liked the poem for the prompt so much—Russell Edson’s “Angels” (below)—that I decided to do my own take on it. Thank you, Maureen Thorson, for continuing to share your useful resources and motivating prompts—you get me back on the poetry track year after year. Thank you, fellow NaPoWriMoers, for being here, reading my poems, and offering comments and encouragement—it makes all the difference.
Poets
after Russell Edson’s “Angels”
They have little use. They are best at the apex of ferment,
when governments dare to be through with them.
Use words, for fellow humans . . .
They fate lies by deeply looking at what matters,
their dregs left for philistines.
Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have.
But what is there for a man to do with his life?
. . . They turn, brutally, myth to true phrase.
When they cry out grit, it makes some screech a whiny twinge; the lie of a fact. Shotguns hear it . . .
Angels
They have little use. They are best as objects of torment.
No government cares what you do with them.
Like birds, and yet so human . . .
They mate by briefly looking at the other.
Their eggs are like white jellybeans.
Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have.
But what is there for a man to do with his life?
. . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame.
When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . .
Copyright Credit: “Angels” from The Tormented Mirror: Poems by Russell Edson © 2001. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: The Tormented Mirror (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001)
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash